Confluence of global, Indian talent

Jyotsna Bhatnagar in Ahmedabad

It's a confluence of the cream of B-brains from blue-chip B-schools the world over — recession notwithstanding. Once again, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, (IIM-A) is busy hosting its much-looked forward to annual management competition, Confluence, with corporate sponsors queueing up for vantage positions to assess the management acumen of future top-notch executives.

Sponsored by the Tata group of companies which is not only the main sponsor for the mega event this year but also the title sponsor for this year’s “Tata Confluence”, others who have boarded the train are old faithfuls like HLL which is sponsoring one of the four main segments of the management competition, namely Marketing. The US-based IT major i2 Technologies is sponsoring the IT and operations fair, Mckinsey is sponsoring the strategy fair while the Tatas are the key sponsors for the finance segment as well.

Speaking to The Financial Express, Mr Priyank Singhal, one of the student organisers of Tata Confluence, admitted that with recession looming large in the background this year, “we did face difficulties initially getting corporate sponsorships, unlike previous years when we could literally pick and choose sponsors of our choice.” However, finally, the lure of the country’s premier B-school proved irresistible for the big names with the result that IIM-A was able to rake in “big sponsorship amounts almost equivalent to those of earlier years.”

And just to keep the to-be movers and shakers of corporate India in tune with the times, while the content of this year’s fairs would be “structurally pretty much the same as before”, the focus of these games including stock exchange trading, corporate takeover games and risk hedging games, among others has been changed in keeping with the existing ground realities as well as the current business and economic conditions.

But it is not only the games which are cued in to the prevailing tough times for companies the world over. “Even our talks and panel discussions this year would reflect this change,” reveals Mr Singhal. Thus while the IT panel discussion topic, not surprisingly, is “Life after dotcoms - Future of the Indian IT Industry,” the topic for the CEO panel discussion too is the sombre and introspective “Indian MNCs - Can it be a reality?”.

In terms of participants, Confluence this year has 35 foreign participants while scores from within the country have flocked to enter the haloed portals of IIM-A, most to participate in the popular game show — The Business Quiz. But what comes as a morale booster for India’s top-rated B-school is the fact that compared to three international B-schools which participated in last year’s management competition, which incidentally was the first time the show was thrown open to B-schools abroad, this year a total of five top-ranking B-schools are participating while several more evinced keen interest in participating.

“Unfortunately, we could not include many not only because of infrastructure constraints such as bearing the expenses of each international school which participates but also the fact that we have to skew the event more in favour of domestic than international B-schools,” revealed one of the organisers.

The five international B-schools participating this time include the London School of Economics, the Asian Institute of Management, Manila, the Thailand-based Asian Institute of Technology, the International University of Japan and the National University of Singapore. The domestic B-schools which would be pitting their brains against each other include all the IIMs, ISB, XLRI, FMS, SP Jain, Narsee Monji and finally XIM, Bhubaneswar. However, while these schools would take part in the various segment games, there are several B-schools which are participating solely in the quiz.

Commenting on the international flavour that IIM’s hitherto home-grown management competition has acquired since last year, Mr Singhal said that apart from the recognition that this has helped IIM-A gain abroad, it has also given the B-brains of India a chance to match their skills with those of their international counterparts. “It has given us a chance to match our methodology, style of education, perspectives and exposures to those prevalent internationally,” he added.